Penguin Modern Classics 5–American Classics

My modest collection of American writers published in the Penguin Modern Classics series begins with Ambrose Bierce’s ever popular Devil’s Dictionary. We could use some of his scepticism in these politically correct days.

William Faulkner is the next in alphabetical order, and I appear to have only his novel Sanctuary in the Modern Classics, though have another of his books in a standard Penguin edition.

1971 edition – “Surprise in the House of Masks” by Facetti	1972 edition – “The Bar” by Bernard Perlin

The sublime, in my opinion, F. Scott Fitzgerald is well represented in my library and I have several in both Modern Classic editions and standard editions. The Great Gatsby is one of my all time favourite books, and I consider it a perfect novel. No one writes party scenes with as much panache as Fitzgerald does.

1968 edition – “Montparno’s Blues” by Kees Van Dongen	1967 edition – cover illustration by Virgil Burnett

1968 edition – “Madame Bonnard” by Pierre Bonnard

A  lone Ernest Hemingway collection of short stories is all I have in the Modern Classics, but it has a great cover by Paul Hogarth.

1964 edition – cover illustration by Paul Hogarth

Several of  the Penguins in my collection I acquired for the Literature course at University, and I recall Henry James’ Portrait of A Lady was one of the books on the curriculum. The others I no doubt purchased separately after taking a liking to his prose.

The ancient editions of Portrait of A Lady and Washington Square have cover illustrations by Philippe Jullian.

1966 edition – cover art by Philippe Jullian	1965 edition – cover art by Philippe Jullian

1966 edition – “Cup of Tea” by Mary Cassat	1966 edition – “Repose” by John Singer Sargent

1969 edition – cover art by Atkinson Grimshaw

Next, three classic American novels - Jack Kerouac’s On The Road,  J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and Of Mice and Men (& Cannery Row) by John Steinbeck.

1972 edition – “The Athlete’s Dream” by Larry Rivers	1969 edition

1973 edition – “Threshing” by Joe Jones

I have previously displayed the Berkley paperback editions of  the Edith Wharton novels in my collection. Below are two more published in the Penguin Modern Classics series.

1979 edition – “Portrait of a Lady” by Frank Weston Benson	1974 edition – “The Misses Vickers” by John Singer Sargent

Finally for American classics, In The Money by William Carlos Williams.

1972 edition – detail from “Carnaval, 1924” by Francis Picabia

Coming up – Irish and Latin American modern classics

Occult & Horror Fiction 3

I shall polish off the remainder of my collection of occult and horror fiction tonight, starting with a collection of spooky stories written by women. The book is entitled, appropriately enough, Haunting Women edited by Alan Ryan and published in 1988 by Avon.

Next, two novels by American SF writer Lucius Shephard, Green Eyes, a quite fascinating zombie novel, and The Golden, Shepard’s take on the vampire genre.

Dan Simmons writes novels in a number of genres, Science Fiction and Horror predominantly. I prefer his Science Fiction novels, but in the early days, after I was bowled over by his Hyperion Cantos, I tasted a few of his other novels.  Carrion Comfort draws its title from the poem by Gerard Manly Hopkins, but is in essence a vampire novel. Fires of Eden is set in Hawaii and centres on that island’s history and mythology.

The next novel by Michael Talbot is a beguiling, beautifully written vampire novel and is entitled The Delicate Dependency, A Novel of Vampire Life. I loved this novel when I first read it, and still occasionally reread it with pleasure. The edition is an Avon paperback published in 1982.

Evangeline Walton is best known for her sequence of books, retelling the Mabinogian, published in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in the 1970s.  She also wrote several other novels, and Witch House is one of them. The edition below was published in 1991 by Collier Books.

Who Fears The Devil is a collection of short stories by Manly Wade Wellman, a prolific writer of horror, science fiction ,folk tales and true crime.

The edition below was published in 1975 by Star Books.

The final book in this collection of occult and horror fiction, is The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton, published by Fawcett in 1976.

Coming next – something completely different.

General Fiction – Janwillem van de Wetering, Gore Vidal, Kurt Vonnegut & Edith Wharton

This will be the last mass market paperback post for the moment, though I will be returning to this sort of book later on.

The two Janwillem van de Wetering books below are not actually fiction, but rather his description of his experiences in Zen Buddhist monasteries in Japan and America, They are quite entertaining to read. He is best known for his series of detective novels set in Amsterdam featuring engaging detectives, Grijpstra and De Geir, which I will get to later on and have already mentioned in an earlier post.

Next, the sole book by Gore Vidal in my collection – Myra Breckinridge with a really cool cover published by Panther in 1969.

So, onto my paperback collection of Kurt Vonnegut, published in the early to late 1970s – a mix of British and American editions.

And finally a rather pretty set of Edith Wharton novels published by Berkley in 1981.

Coming soon – Picador books